Game changers earn a short-term first-mover advantage, and given the revenues generated from Apple's iPhone division I don't think they've had any shortage of THAT.
Disagree, a game changer idea is just an idea. The product/theory serves as a vehicle for the diffusion of the concept. Products drive innovative ideas, not the other way around. How quickly and how far the idea spreads is dependent upon the quality of the product and the elegance of it's design.
Ultimately, nobody outside of the industry cares about the industry so a badly implemented idea is irrelevant to them.
Longer term, people will copy innovators and incrementally improve on their new technology, and everybody benefits as a result, in the form of accelerated innovation and lower prices.
Evidently somebody forget to tell that to Microsoft, because they've been ripping people off for years and making a shit ton of money doing so. ;)
Businesses exist to make money, but in the absence of strong government regulation (and more importantly strong punitive action to back those regulations) businesses tend to take shortcuts by plagiarizing design to maximize profits and when this practice becomes widespread enough, there's no clear economic incentive for innovation amongst the industry.
As the law stands right now, competition is severely hindered in order to extract even more exorbitant revenue than what the Free Market(R) naturally has to offer. You can't have a competitive marketplace when you have to ask the incumbent's permission to compete with them.
I agree with you about how fucked up the US Patent system is, but I think in this case, Apple was more pissed about the infringements to it's design. Good visual design is not factually quantifiable, but the Patents have to be written so there are at least some guidelines for what companies can and can't do from a design standpoint to prevent what you're describing.
Incidentally I would say that I'm surprised that you're siding with Samsung given what they tried to pull: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/09/27/1748236/apple-says-samsung-3g-patents-violate-rand-requirements
Dictatorial control wrapped up in a shiny package, and the masses love it. It is the antithesis of the equalising power of technology that made the field so attractive to me in the first place.
Herein lies the problem: you are not everybody. I can't speak for the masses, but personally I'm only for open up to the point prior to having to run an anti-virus on my fucking phone. Openness is a good thing in the context of programming, but any halfway competent engineer will tell you that it makes for crap OS design.
